Upcoming Events

Spring, 2018:

It Takes Two Minds to Think Our Most Difficult Thoughts: Bion's Seminal Works on Thinking and Communicating

In this class, we will study the early seminal works of Bion including his explication of psychotic functioning, his theory of thinking, and his great clinical works including Attacks on Linking and essays on arrogance and hallucination.

To stir the pot of clinical thinking, we will read several current clinical articles and ask ourselves these questions: How has Bion's work influenced current clinical theory? Does the work we are reading add something to an understanding of the case? or subtract? Is it possible/impossible to "link" his work to current psychoanalytic literature?.

The first goal of the course is to bring into mind many concepts that Bion made a part of psychoanalytic thought such as linking, container/contained, projective identification, alpha function, O, and do our best to make a meal of them that nurtures our minds and our clinical work. Secondly, we will learn to recognize the influence of Bion in psychoanalytic theories of today and thirdly, we will apply our understanding of Bion's work on thinking and learning from experience to our own clinical work.